Everton’s ten men overwhelmed
DICK GETS TWO
Blackpool 5, Everton 0
STANLEY MATTHEWS went back home to play for Blackpool against Stoke last week. This week Jock Dodds came home to play for Everton at Blackpool, all his recent grievances with the Goodison Park club forgotten since he was reinstated in the first team again.
George Dick had his first game in the First Division since the match at Burnley nearly three months ago.
The pitch had rolled out unexpectedly firm after two days of rain, but was so soft an inch below the surface, that it was soon churning into mud.
In spite of the early kick-off there were 25,000 people on the ground when the teams appeared.
Only one point divided these Lancashire rivals when the match opened. The two forward lines had each scored only 30 goals in 24 games.
BLACKPOOL: Wallace, Shimwell, Suart, Johnston, Hayward, Kelly, Matthews, Mortensen, McIntosh, Dick and Munro.
EVERTON: Sagar, Saunders, Duffdale, Farrell, Jones (T. G.), Watson, Grant, Wainwright, Dodds, Fielding and Higgins.
Referee: Mr. R. Duerden (Lancaster).
THE GAME
Everton, winning the toss, defended the south goal. Wallace had to make a dive, to avert a comer, to reach Johnston’s long headed pass back to him after Dodds had opened a raid oil Everton’s right wing in the first 30 seconds.
The first minute had not gone, in any case, before Everton on this wing won a corner, which Dodds headed outside a post.
SAGAR IN ACTION
Immediately afterwards Blackpool made it 1-1 in corners and, in the process, were nearer a goal than Everton had been, Sagar diving at the feet of Matthews and McIntosh before hurling himself to a ball which Mortensen, from 30 yards, shot perilously near a post.
Blackpool’s raids continued. With eight minutes gone T. G. Jones, the Everton centre-half, went off the field for repairs.
For another couple of minutes Blackpool hammered at this depleted Everton defence.
At the end of the second minute a goal came - a goal built by the new right wing triangle.
Across from this quarter the ball was crossed, missed two men in the jaws of Everton’s goal, reached Munro. Back the little Scot centred it.
WIDE OPEN
Into a wide open defence the ball fell, skidded away from DICK as he stood almost under the bar, was retrieved by the big inside-left and stabbed wide of the unsighted Sagar before the scattered defence could position itself.
Tom Jones limped into the dressing room after that unexpected goal, left his defence with the outside-right, Grant, at centre-half to face continued Blackpool pressure.
The second goal came after 14 minutes. Again it was DICK who shot it.
He took a short forward pass from McIntosh, side-stepped the full back, and almost walked the ball up to and past Sagar before steering it calmly over the empty line.
Everton’s shuffled defence was at sea. Another shot by Mortensen cannoned out off Saunders a foot over the bar with Sagar near the other post as the ball ricochetted away from him.
OFFSIDE
Everton’s four forwards were not completely inactive When they crossed the halfway line the offside whistle pulled up Dodds in his tracks.
Again, too, Higgins crossed a centre which was cleared before Dodds could thunder up to reach it.
Yet the class football was still being played by Blackpool. Matthews and McIntosh in rapid succession shot barely wide of a post.
THIRD GOAL
Stan Mortensen races through defence
Two minutes of the first-half hour were still left when Blackpool made it 3-0 immediately after Sagar had beaten out on his knees a ball which Mortensen had headed low and fast at him from his partner’s perfect centre.
McIntosh made the third goal as he had made the second.
This time a lobbed pass over Watson’s head left MORTENSEN to race through a scattered defence for possession of the ball against the deserted Sagar.
By half a yard and a split second the forward won the race, hooked the ball into another open net away from the goalkeeper.
Everton were still not completely outplayed, compelled admiration by the resource of their football with only 10 men.
From Dodds’ pass Higgins shot a ball which only a great goalkeeper as Wallace is could have reached and beaten out.
It was Sagar for whom there was most employment. He punched out a centre from Munro which curled into him at the height of the bar with four Blackpool forwards racing in to meet it.
BLACKPOOL'S ESCAPE
In the next minute Blackpool’s goal had an escape. Kelly stood on an offside appeal. On raced Grant to the line, crossed a ball which two Everton men seemed to miss before Hayward, in desperation, stabbed it back into the arms of Wallace.
Another minute, in the 40th of the half it was 4-0 and Blackpool had equalled the team’s record this season against Huddersfield in early September
This fourth goal appeared to be a bit of a freak.
Matthews created it by crossing a centre from a position where he generally races to the line. Again the ball seemed to skid away from a couple of men before cannoning out to McINTOSH who hit it low and must have been surprised to see it pass Sagar who. as he stood on the line, had the ball deflected away from him by one of his own men.
Half-time: Blackpool 4, Everton 0.
Second half
With a mist falling over the ground the interval was reduced to three minutes. Everton reopened the half still with only 10 men. Tom Jones could not return because of a twisted ankle.
Raid followed raid on Everton’s goal - a goal protected by a defence resolute and obviously prepared to play to the last minute.
But often it was raced out of position.
Dodds hit one of his old thunderbolts wide of a post in a breakaway by Everton’s forwards.
Otherwise it was an uninterrupted story of Blackpool pressure in the thickening mist, lit once by a brilliant one-man raid by Mortensen who raced half the length of the field, outpacing three pursuers before shooting into the side net.
No. 5 came after 17 minutes of the half. Everybody by that time was beginning to accept goals almost as a commonplace.
This one was created by Munro and Matthews in an unexpected partnership near the left corner flag. In the end Matthews sorted out the maze with a pass through to Munro who crossed it to near the far post where MORTENSEN in a leap, headed a goal almost on top of an Everton goalkeeper deserted again.
OFF AGAIN
Mortensen was soon after another, passed one man, passed a second, but was swerving a third as he fell to a tackle which had no sort of ceremony in it.
From the free kick there was nearly a sixth goal. McIntosh chasing a low pass and shooting it so fast that Sagar was glad to bear it down and clear it with the centre-forward challenging him.
With 20 minutes left it had become merely a case of waiting for the end and counting the goals - if there were any more to come.
There should have been a few others. Mortensen missed three in the last ten minutes with only the gallant Sagar in front of him. With five, I suppose. Blackpool had every reason to be content.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 5 (Dick 10, 14 min, Mortensen 28, 62 min, McIntosh 40 min)
EVERTON 0
This game was won and lost as early as the eighth minute when such a great centre-half as Tom Jones limped out of it.
Without the king-pin of defence, Everton never had a early as the eighth minute when resolutely as 10 men can play but against impossible odds.
Yet it was no mere negative triumph. The football of the Blackpool forwards was at last the sort which produces goals - fast, direct, aggressive. Nearly all the short ornamental passes were discarded until, for all practical purposes, the match had been won.
McIntosh led this line as a line should be led, keeping the ball on the move, leaving the goal raids through a scattering defence to the fast, tireless Mortensen, and to an inside-left, Dick, whose football in the mud was a revelation.
Add the elusive, brilliant Matthews to this force and Everton’s shuffled defence could do nothing whatever about it.
The right wing all-England triangle again gave distinction to the match and there was every indication that Kelly is in First Division football to stay.
Blackpool were always fated to win this game after that vital eighth minute, but it was football of authentic quality which won the club’s biggest victory in First Division football since the end of the war.
NEW MOVE MAY SOLVE ONE PROBLEM
But Blackpool’s great need is GOALS
By “Spectator”
A DATE TO BE ENTERED IN CAPITAL LETTERS IN THE HISTORY OF BLACKPOOL FOOTBALL MAY BE DECEMBER 27, 1947.
On the 27th, in the lounge of a Stoke-on-Trent hotel, a new star act may have been given to the game.
I write “may" because I have been watching football too many years to commit myself to a definite opinion after only one match.
But in its first 90 minutes the new all-England triangle on the right wing of the Blackpool team had such great promise that it cannot be dismissed as another of those crazy experiments which make the front page for a day and fade out inside a month.
Manager Joe Smith decided on the new formation 24 hours after the Christmas Day fixture. That match was another of those games which have been the despair of all who watch the present see-saw Blackpool team, up on the heights one week and so deep in the depths that they are nearly invisible the next.
Captain's offer
HARRY JOHNSTON, the Blackpool captain, was in the manager’s office discussing the Christmas Day failure.
“What about playing on the right wing ? ” asked Mr. Smith. “Something has to be done about giving the passes to Stan Matthews.”
What Johnston answered was typical of a young man who thinks first of his club every time.
“I’ll play anywhere if it’ll help,” he said.
Twenty hours later the manager informed his team that the new formation was to be put to the test.
Problem solved
To write that it was a success however harsh it might have seemed because of its exclusion of George Farrow from the famous Farrow-Hayward-Johnston partnership, is only to repeat what every newspaper in the land reported after the match.
Now the question Is: Has a new and great wing been born?
If it has, the problem of the neglect of Stanley Matthews may have been solved, and the unselfishness of the Blackpool captain justified.
For Johnston was obviously not serving his own personal interest in consenting to a move from a position where he was re-establishing himself in the estimation of the England selectors.
Not that I think he has seriously prejudiced his prospects of a selection for England again.
General opinion appears to be that Phil. Taylor of Liverpool may be missing from the team to meet Scotland.
Before last weekend the people who claim to know were predicting that Bill Wright would cross back to right-half and Johnston be reintroduced on the other wing.
Now, If the latest Blackpool experiment comes off, Wright may remain where he is and England may field at Hampden Park in April the entire Blackpool triangle, which would probably make a record in international football.
It is early yet to express a definite opinion, but that pre-match conference in a Blackpool hotel may yet have a significance far beyond the confines of one town’s football.
More goals wanted
IN the meantime, whatever the fate of the new wing, the major problem of a forward line which is not scoring sufficient goals remains.
The present total - before today’s Everton match - of 30 goals in 24 games is utterly inconsistent with the team’s present position in the table. That position has been achieved mainly by a defence ranking on the figures in the “against” column as the strongest ever fielded by Blackpool in the First Division.
In the entire Division three forward lines only have scored as few goals and it is interesting, if a little depressing, to record that the front line of the Blackpool team relegated in 1933 actually scored 15 more in the first 24 games.
If that is not an indictment of the scoring force of the present attack I should like to know what is.
Should be big
WHAT the line clearly requires is one of those tall forwards, either at inside-left or in the centre who can take the chances which today are being built by good attractive football in midfield and rejected at an average rate of half-a-dozen a match.
People are asking, “Why can’t Jock Dodds come back?” There are two reasons. The first is Everton’s refusal to release him. The second would be the refusal of the majority of the Blackpool board, if he were a free agent, to sign him.
The majority voted for his transfer. The majority, I am told, would vote against re-signing him.
So they may have to find somebody else. And, if the present famine continues, they will have to find him.
Time marches on
IT makes you realise how time, in truth, marches on when it is recalled that the new chief of staff, has served under ' the chairmanship of Mr. Fred Seed, Mr. Sam Butterworth, Mr. Albert Hargreaves, and Sir Lindsay Parkinson and Col. W. Parkinson Some of those names are already almost legendary in the story of Blackpool football.
The board will not regret its selection of him as chairman. Nor Mr. Albert Hindley’s as vice- chairman.
THEY are still complaining at Stoke that Stanley Matthews should never have been transferred.
His absence has affected the box-office, too. Last weekend’s match was, I was told, the first since his departure at which every seat in t he stands had been taken.
Burden of the lament is that City were paid £11,500 by Blackpool for the England forward and that the two inside forwards who have since had to be signed cost between £13,000 and £14,000.
But, to be fair to Manager Bob McGrory, those two, Kiernan and McAlinden, were signed not because Matthews had left but because the City’s casualty list made their acquisition imperative.
But they’re still moaning down in the Potteries all the same.
Jottings from all parts
BY "SPECTATOR" 3 January 1948
JIMMY GARTH, who has left Preston for Clyde, was one of the forwards on Blackpool’s recent “Men to Watch” list. He was under survey at the Preston- Burnley game on Boxing Day.
No offers were made and with all respect to Jimmy, who is a grand little footballer, I cannot pretend to be regretful about it. For he is a little footballer and, unless I am wrong, it is a big man or two in the front line whom Blackpool require.
In these days, when such a lot of football is played in the air, a good big ’un is infinitely preferable to a good little ’un. That, at least, is my view.
***
NOW there are two Haywards in League football.
Basil Hayward, brother of the Blackpool centre-half, is established - or appears to be - in the Port Vale team at last. He is a centre-half, too, taller than his elder brother.
Once he was on Blackpool’s staff and would still be on it if he had not preferred to live in the Potteries, where his father is a police sergeant.
Manager Joe Smith always had a high opinion of him.
BEFORE today’s game only three centre-forwards had scored against Blackpool in home games this season.
There were two before the Christmas matches - Forbes of Wolverhampton Wanderers and McIntosh of Preston.
Then, on Christmas Day, Freddie Steele, shot two, and only a week after he had returned to the game off the casualty list with a broken bone in a leg.
Steele, too, was the first to score a couple - the others had been content - or had to be content - with one each.
Mr. Steele, take a bow. And Mr. Hayward take a bow, too. for causing this famine among visiting centre-forwards.
IF we can’t have that famous stadium at Blackpool for years - and it is obvious that we can’t - what about making the present ground a little fitter for the latter-day heroes to shout in?
Mr. L. Hargreaves, of Poulton Old-road, who is on the committee of Blackpool F.C. Supporters’ Club, submits today a plan for the reroofing of the shelter on the east side - the shelter which was built by the first Supporters’ Club in the long ago - and increasing the height of the structure to the level of the apex of the present roof, with one slope back to the Henry-street wall.
He advocates, too, the shelter’s extension by 25 yards towards the Spion Kop embankment, and expresses the view that a 1s. 6d. admission, instead of the present 1s. 3d., to the new, higher and longer shelter would soon defray the cost.
That’s his proposal. Is it feasible in these days?
ONE or two good judges think that once he is in full training Bill Ormond may solve the outside-left problem at Blackpool.
From all I have heard this is not an unreasonable expectation. If he should become a star it will make a remarkable chapter in Blackpool football history, for he was discovered by accident.
When Sam Jones went to watch an inter-Command match at Catterick his instructions were to present a report on another player. It was Ormond who chiefly attracted Sam’s notice, and on his recommendation Blackpool gave this forward a trial and afterwards offered him a professional contract.
Ormond should be out of the Army by the beginning of next season. Then we shall see if he s as good as he promises to be.
ONE of my companions on the u Stoke trail was Mr. Rupert Eakins, a father as proud of his son’s prowess on half a dozen sporting fields as he is entitled to be.
Douglas Eakins, the 20-years- old Blackpool “A” team centre-forward, who will be out of the R.A.F. next month, was sports champion at Baines’s Grammar School, Poulton-le-Fylde, five years in succession.
In his last eight games for the “A” team he has scored 15 goals, and at his present rate of progress is one of those young men whom Blackpool must not lose.
There are one or two on the "A” staff on whom a few clubs are casting covetous glances. A Cheshire League club has more than a passing interest in Albert Hobson, the young outside-right who played for the Central League team while on leave during the Christmas weekend.
***
WHO is Blackpool’s longest-service player on the present staff? That’s an easy one, but I have been asked to answer it to settle another of those bets.
Jock Wallace has been longer on Blackpool’s books than any other con- temporary player.
After being signed from Raith Rovers, he made his first appearance for Blackpool at Lincoln on February 17, 1934, which was exactly four months after the first game played for Blackpool by Sam Jones, who is still on the club’s staff but playing no longer.
***
IT looks as if Malcolm Butler the Irish full back who still trains and lives in Blackpool, may win the bet he made weeks ago with all the odds against him.
He said then that his new club, Accrington Stanley, would finish the season higher in the
Northern Section table than Blackpool in the First Division.
The Stanley ended the Christmas holidays leading the "Northern,” after the St. Annes centre-forward, Stanley Mercer, had scored three goals in two games against the former leaders, Lincoln City.
STANLEY MORTENSEN, as I announced a week ago, has been selected in one Press census as the No. 1 footballer of 1947.
Now, after another survey of the year, Eddie Shimwell is nominated as the player who has made the greatest advance in First Division football during the last 12 months.
Second in the list - and down Manchester way they think he should be first - is Jack Morris, who, according to all the experts, is destined for the next England team.
The Blackpool full-back may make this grade, too - if not this season then in a year or two. He has already had one international trial.
WHAT a couple of first-class games Neil Franklin, the Stoke captain and England centre-half, played against Blackpool during the Christmas holiday.
He is small as centre half-backs go, but in the air he is a master, clearing nine aerial passes out of 10. And there are such a lot of aerial passes nowadays that he dominates the centre of the field almost every time he plays.
But he is little less assertive in the tackle.
It’s a dog’s life for a centre-forward facing Mr. Franklin. And at Stoke, too, they have the coloured man, Roy Brown, who at Blackpool last season, as the captain’s deputy, had a storming match which they still talk about at Bloomfield-road.
Fortunate are Stoke in the possession of these two.
SIGNED-THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HOLD
THEY call Walter Rickett, Blackpool's new outside-left, “a mighty atom” in Sheffield.
There is little of him - 5ft. 5 tin. - but he has Yorkshire grit and resource in every one of those inches.
I know because I have seen him since the war play two remarkable games against Blackpool at Bramall-lane.
Two years ago nobody in the Blackpool defence could hold him. Last season he ran riot again, scored a couple of goals - one after racing half the length of the field on his own - in a 4-2 defeat of Blackpool.
This season he has played on both wings for the United in the First Division, and once volunteered to go into the centre.
14 goals
In recent times his game has been under a shadow “yet,” comments Manager Joe Smith of Blackpool, “he can’t have lost all his form” - but last season he was in 41 of the United’s 42 League games and shot 14 First Division goals.
Rickett is single 27 years of age, worked in Sheffield’s steel foundries before he became a professional, and has had only one club.
THE FARROW-RICKETT DEAL
Player exchange took only minutes
IN the lounge of a Preston A hotel shortly after five o’clock yesterday afternoon the 11-years career of George Farrow with Blackpool ended.
As Farrow signed a form which made him a Sheffield United player, Walter Rickett, 5ft. 5in. Sheffield forward, signed another for Blackpool in an exchange transfer in which not a penny was spent, except for the £10 signing-on fees, by either club.
Mr. Joe Smith, the manager, was there for Blackpool. Mr. Teddy Davison, the Sheffield United manager, en route back to the Yorkshire city after a scouting expedition on New Year’s Day in Scotland, held the Sheffield brief.
It was all over in a few minutes.
I hear that Farrow went to Preston with a bag packed, prepared to take a train to London for his new club’s game at Highbury today.
He was told that as the team had been selected and had left for London he should instead play his first game for the second eleven in the Central League at Bramall-lane this afternoon.
He returned home, and left by train for Sheffield early today.
Rickett is also in the Central League for his first match with his new club. He played at Bury this afternoon.
It is certain. I think, that he would have appeared against Everton in the First Division if the 14-day rule - no player can play in a Cup-tie for a new club unless he has been signed for a fortnight - had not made him ineligible for next week’s Cup match.
THE CUP TEAM
“We didn’t want to disturb the probable Cup team,” commented Mr. Smith. “Later I should think that Rickett will be an automatic selection.”
Rickett’s first game for Blackpool therefore, will probably be at Wolverhampton a fortnight today.
Farrow, shooting, long-throwing right half played his first game for Blackpool’s first team on September 5, 1936 - not as a halfback but as an inside-left, after a ‘‘hat-trick ” for the Reserve a week earlier.
He leaves Blackpool with everybody wishing him “All the best.” He has given great service to the club since he was signed from Bournemouth in the summer of 1936.
Blackpool have never regretted the £1,000 they spent.
LEEDS UNITED HAVE POOR RECORD HERE
Will it be different in the Cup-tie?
IT will be the first time that the clubs have ever met in the Cup when Leeds United come to town next weekend.
The United have never - or scarcely ever - set the Ribble or the Wyre on fire when they have been in these parts. One exception was an amazing 7-3 game which they won at Blackpool in 1930, which was the Yorkshire club’s relegation season.
For the rest, Bloomfield-road has nearly always been as bare of points for them as was Mother Hubbard’s cupboard of bones
It was 3-0 last season for Blackpool, and 4-2 a year earlier. And in those two games Stanley Mortensen scored five goals, three in 1946, a couple last season.
Well, if one Stanley can do that, what can two Stanleys do? The answer is that this is a Cup-tie, and in a Cup-tie, as Blackpool learned at Sheffield last season, anything can happen - and often does.
THE officials of the Blackpool Football Supporters’ Club join me in wishing all our supporters a very Happy New Year, and to the officials and players of the football club we all say, “May 1948 be a great year for you.”
Snooker
THE snooker championship is progressing. I hear that George Farrow, the favourite, has been knocked out, and that Joe Robinson, the reserve goalkeeper, is now fancied.
Ronnie Suart beat Jock Wallace. A keen match is expected when Stanley Mortensen and Harry Johnston meet.
Cushions
OWING to the fire which destroyed a large number of our cushions, it has not been possible to sell any at recent matches.
We are hoping to receive a supply at an early date.
Cup-tie
NEXT Saturday our team start on the road , which leads to Wembley. I hope Blackpool fans will be at Bloomfield-road in big force to give them cheers and encouragement against Leeds United.
Membership
LET your New Year resolution be to join the club. The fee is only 2s. 6d. Join now.
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